Scaling Tech Consulting through Veteran Leadership and Relationship Systems

What happens when you spend $150,000 trying to win new business and then have almost nothing to show for it? Well, for Kamar Perkins, that experience completely changed how he thought about growing a consulting business.

Kamar is a military veteran and founder of the Protech Consulting Group, where he has built a growing technology consulting business focused on areas including AI, machine learning, and digital transformation. What makes his story so interesting is that he didn’t come from a technology background.

In this episode, you’re going to hear how he went from submitting roughly 30 RFPs per month with zero wins to building business through relationships, strategic partnerships, and consistent prospecting. We also explore his approach to hiring, why he believes that relationships matter more than networks, and what he would do completely differently if he was starting all over again.

If you’re looking for a smarter way to create opportunities and grow your consulting business, you’re going to want to hear this conversation with Kamar.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.

Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business.

So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.

Kamar Perkins is a retired U.S. Army veteran, author, and entrepreneur who blends military-grade discipline with modern tech. As Founder of Protech Consulting Group – a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned and HUBZone firm – he delivers secure IT and cloud solutions to government and industry. A former 3rd Special Forces Group paratrooper and Army’s “Best Warrior,” Kamar leverages his logistics and leadership background to drive mission-critical results. He is a dedicated advocate for mental health and veteran mentorship, helping others translate resilience into lasting success.

Connect with Kamar Perkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamardperkins/

Discover more about Protech Consulting Group: https://protechconsultinggroup.com/

Kamar, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Looking forward to this conversation. I think as those that know you or those that have gone to your website, they will quickly see that you have a background in the military. And I wanted to kind of explore the perspective of, or the thinking around kind of the advantage that you feel that has given you. And I’ve interviewed and talked to many entrepreneurs and consulting business owners that have a background in the military. But I always like to hear, you know, everyone’s individual kind of perspectives and lessons. So just for you, like what, what came, what have you pulled from the military into your work now of building your consulting business?

I think one of the biggest things for me looking at my military career, you know, I started off as an enlisted man and then I commissioned over and became an officer. So taking leadership from both of those perspectives, it’s very different when you’re super hands-on as an enlisted junior noncommissioned officer and then being an officer, learning kind of more of the backgrounds and the higher views, taking those leadership perspectives and then empowering my subordinate leaders. I’m empowering my CTO, empowering even my executive assistant, or empowering my chief operations officer. I’m empowering them to be the leaders that I hired them to be.

And that’s essentially what it is in the military. We have one of the greatest militaries in the world for that reason. Our noncommissioned officers are the backbones of our military and our officers empower them to be the greatest leaders and warriors that they can be at every echelon and every branch of our military. So just taking that, taking up the logistical aspects of it, that well-oiled machine, knowing what works, knowing that there’s no- we have a saying in the Army where we say, “There’s ‘a’ way, but there’s no ‘the’ way.” So we know that there’s a way to get things done, but there’s no like “This is the way.”

We know that entrepreneurship, we know that business, running a business, no matter where you’re at on the field, there’s a way to get that done. And then just that non-quit mentality, it’s just like: this is, “There’s no Plan B. There’s Plan A and this is the objective. I’m storming this objective come hell or high water.” So it’s just those, some of those things just to throw out there. I think there are some key aspects or some key things that I take away.

And your time in the military, was it involved, like did it involve heavy technology use? I’m wondering how do you go from being an officer in the military to now running a consulting business, a growing consulting business? You’ve been at it for I think three and a half years or so, company’s growing, right? You got some full-time people. How do you get from yeah, being in the military to running technology, a programming, you know, kind of digital transformation related consulting business.

I did nothing technological or techie in the Army at all. It was not my background at all. The most I ever did technology-wise is, you know, probably the computers in trucks and ordering parts. I don’t think I did much tech and then weapon systems, of course.

But what happened was I’m a bit of a nerd. And so when I decided that I wanted to start my business, I essentially dug into: what is the government spending the most money on? We know that the government is the greatest, it’s the largest, the US Government’s the largest purchasers of goods and services, bar none. And I said, “What are they spending money on?” Right in this 2022 to 2023, I’m asking these questions and we’ve seen that DevSecOps at the time was what they were spending money on. And I said, “Well, what’s the future of this?” Because there’s one thing to look at and say, “software development,” okay, well what’s the future? Like, what in this software development are we spending money on? Who is our competition? Right, and that’s another thing. In the military: what are our allies doing and what are our enemies doing?

So we look at artificial intelligence, machine learning, what started to be the buzzwords back in 2023. You know, people were figuring it out, et cetera, and now we are where we are with it. So when I looked at that and I looked at the spending, that’s how I decided what area I wanted to go into. And the reason any of this came to mind, is because when I asked a really good friend of mine who owns one of the largest government contracting companies, he’s a partner of one of the largest government contracting companies in the world, me and him have lunch in Virginia. You know, when I’m down in that area visiting parents, I said, “If I wanted to start a business, what do I do?” Like, you know, as you would ask a mentor. And he goes, “Find a problem and become the solution.” And he looks at the server and he goes, “Can I get a black coffee?” And I’m like, “Okay, well, I guess that’s where that piece of advice ends.” But that’s true. For anyone that’s thinking of starting or hasn’t started a business or who has a business and they’re like, “How do I scale?” Find another problem.

[06:33] – Knowing Your Passion and Making an Impact

I want to ask you something about that because I think when you look in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, a lot of investors or well-known entrepreneurs will say, you know, find exactly what you mentioned, right? Find a problem that you can solve, or the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. But you also have the other side of the coin, which is the people say, and especially when you’re talking about a business like a consulting business, which tends to really involve the founder generally early on in a lot of the delivery work that you need to build, you should really lean into a business that you are passionate about, that you have a lot of experience and expertise with.

So when I look at your choice you took, I’d call it a more unconventional route in the consulting world. You didn’t lean into your necessarily the passion or the expertise of technology. You found, as you said, a problem and therefore an opportunity. Can you share any more around? Like, did you ever wrestle with that? Was that even a consideration? Of, “I don’t really know technology. I see a problem and therefore an opportunity. But it’s not my jam. It’s not my, you know, where I like spend a lot of time,” and walk us through that.

So my passion, and now it has become, right, like now I would consider myself an SME in artificial intelligence machine learning. I’m great talent. But I still wouldn’t consider it a passion. My passion is people. That’s my niche, that’s my passion. I can bring two people together and go, “You will make a great team based on your capabilities and past performances to go after this opportunity with us.” I can see that. That’s my passion is growing networks and growing capabilities and sharing and bringing and creating partner ecosystems. Creating ecosystems in general.

Outside of that, it’s impact. So what does this company do and what does the work that I do allow me to do? It allows me to create scholarships for students, allows me to create openings for homes of women who are victims of domestic violence or patients who are addicted to drugs, et cetera. It allows me to do all of this social impact work which is very dear, near and dear to me. But I also get to interact with the people. I’m not as a founder, I’ve never been and I am not seen at a computer coding or building off a Jira or any of those systems. No. I have a team of very qualified individual who that is their passion, you know, for them to do that.

[09:14] – Why Relationships Beat Networking Every Time

That makes sense and that’s an interesting perspective. So walk us through how you went about actually building this business. You left the military, you found this opportunity where the first few clients come from.

Honestly one of the, I’m going to tell you my first win was like I did not expect this at all. So my first year in business was a wash. I mean I probably spent $150,000 that year just washed outsourcing. You know, I outsourced to India for Proposal Writers and all these other places and it was just a wash, dude. Like thirty responses to RFP, RFIs, RFQs. Every month we’re just knocking them out, right. And nothing, zero wins.

And I changed my perspective. I said, “Okay, clearly this is not working.” And so what I did was I leaned into again what, what I was good at: building teams. I started going to these events. I started meeting individuals, different people, and I didn’t ask them necessarily for any. I never said, “Hey, give me some work,” or “Let me get, like, two FTEs on this opportunity.” I just built a relation, built a relationship with them, right? So I, my assistant posted this thought dump that we had earlier where we said, “relationships are more important than networking,” right? So going out and building those relationships are more important.

So by proxy, out building relationships, a really good friend of mine, now me and him golf, I send his kids gifts every birthday and Christmas. That’s another thing I do. Like, if I meet someone, you know, I ask the important questions that you would ask your friends: “Hey, what’s your kid’s name? What do they like?When’s their birthday?” And I really take note of these. And they get messages, they get gifts. They get, you know, for their birthday. Because that’s important, right? People want to do business with people they know, like, and respect.

All right, and we’re building that relationship. So by proxy, I go out to Augusta, Georgia, because a really good friend of mine invited me out. He says, “Hey, dude, you got to go to this TechNet in Augusta, Georgia.” And I said, “Okay.” I mean, Augusta, Georgia is a golf- like I’ve ever been to Augusta for technology. I didn’t even know you’re doing that. Three stoplight town of Augusta. And so I go out to Augusta. It was actually a great, it was a great conference. I mean, phenomenal conference. And so we’re in Augusta, and and we’re, we’re at one of the, one of the networking mixers, you know. So you go to these conferences, and they have mixers that are like, invite only, whatever. And so I go to- I get invited and I go to one.

Where there’s like hors d’oeuvres and appetizers and drinks? Like, that kind of stuff.

Free drinks, hors d’oeuvres.

Walking around with little trays-

Yeah, yeah, that’s how it works. Yeah, it’s a great time, you know, but you need some good people there. And then you meet some people who are just like, they’re there. Okay. So we’re standing there, and the guy goes, “Hey, I need somebody that can, somebody that can program, that can build an app on,” I think it was Jira that they were asking for back then years ago.

And I said, first off, you know, I want, you know, my dad always says: “If someone offers you a great opportunity, and you don’t know how to do it. Accept the opportunity to learn how to do it later,” right? So the sales guy, and he goes, I go, “Yeah, my team, man, they could knock Jira out a hundred percent. That’s easy. Cakewalk, of course, dude, are you crazy?”

So he brings me in there, and I’m talking to the guy, and he’s telling me. I said, well, I kept pushing him towards “What do you want built?” versus the technical piece. I can’t answer the technical piece. I’m not a technical founder. There are technical founders. Elon Musk, for example, is a technical founder. I’m not a technical founder. Okay, so tell me about your vision. What do you want, right, of this application? So he says- I said, “Yeah, I can get that built for you, no problem,” right? I said, “Let me go to the bathroom real quick.” I ran to the bathroom, called my CTO, “I’m so- sure can we do this?” And he’s like, “Yeah, dude. Like, I was doing that in college.” And I’m like, “Oh, thank God. So we go back in, and I said, “you know, this is kind of the idea.” I said, “you know, give me. I said, give me a couple hours. I’ll run back to my hotel, I’m a price it for you, and I’ll have you an answer.” And that was my first. That was my first client.

And so by there, you know, my biggest thing is adding value, right? So it’s like, we built this, this product for you. Now how do we continue to add value? How do we scale it for you? Do we continue to service it for you? Do you have a buddy who has a great idea or whatever? Like, how do we continue to add value to your partner ecosystem, right? And then just doing good, good solid work and being good and honest people, right? And it just built out from there. And then before you know it, we got our partners that we have now who are like, “Hey, we’re going after this opportunity. Would love to have you guys on,” or “Can you hold up this piece?” And I’m like, “I can’t. But I know a guy or I know people or I know a company.”

[14:08] – Why Mass RFP Submissions Never Won Clients

So let me ask you. I mean, you, you spent months, right, going after 20, 30 RFPs per month. I think you mentioned $150,000 kind of, you know, you said, maybe down the drain, but essentially a learning experience right from it. Looking back on that, why do you think you lost? Like, why do you think that you did not win any of those RFPs? Because that’s potentially you know, 100 RFPs or, or maybe more over that period. Let’s just say give or take, right? What was missing.

I think the reality of it is right now, I was just talking about this with someone else, but the reality of it is it’s like: hey, if you’re the federal government and you have a, you have a problem, okay, and you need a solution, here’s this- and this is a multimillion dollar solution. A: we didn’t know about pricing. We didn’t know- there was no ‘go/no go’ strategy. There wasn’t any capture on any of these. I mean, you’re pumping out thirty a month. There’s no capture product. There’s no capture on any of this. No one’s doing due diligence at that point.

Just explain for those that aren’t familiar with what you mean by capture.

So the capture process is essentially where you- we’re reaching out into the agency or we reaching out into the entity that is requesting or that has posted the opportunity. And we’re trying to get the program office, we’re trying to get the KOs, which is contracting officers, or we’re trying to get someone within that agency to talk to us more about their problem. We either are going to do a capabilities briefing where we tell them what we do and who we are, or somewhere along the line we’re making, making touch points, right? We have about a couple touch points. We’re letting them know, “Hey, we are Protect Consulting Group and we are going to submit to this opportunity,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay? So none of that’s being done. And this is a very standard procedure for dang near any company winning, right? I thought, “Hey, if I’m pumping out volume, someone’s going to respond.” But really I’m a baby company with no past performance. No one’s writing me a check for a million dollars on a problem they really need solved.

But you are kind of taking the approach, which, I mean, still a lot of people do this even when it’s not related to RFPs, right? It’s kind of like pray and spray marketing, right? Sending out a whole bunch of emails or a whole bunch of LinkedIn messages thinking somebody should respond, right? Law of numbers. But it’s missing the context, it’s missing the relationship building. There’s no human to human touch, there’s no personalization and of course the other side sees that. And volume doesn’t win the day, right? Usually it’s value and it’s actually connecting with people. So that, that makes sense, that that part was, was missed.

I want to ask you about one other thing you mentioned, which is the approach that it sounds like you took when you decided, “We’re not going to keep doing 20, 30 kind of blind RFPs,” you decided to really lean into building relationships with people and that mindset. I guess I’m- It sounds like before we hit record you said maybe that your dad influenced you on that. But I’m wondering like, where did that come from? And I’m setting this up. The background is a lot of people think that especially when they’re early in their business, they need to generate sales, right? There’s pressure to get cash flow coming in. Whereas relationship building often takes time, right? You’re not going in for the kill, you’re not going in for the sale. You’re going in to try and add value. And that, and that can take time.

So can you walk us through your mindset at that time? Like where did that belief come from? And what I’m seeing is that you’d made a decision to somehow remain a bit more patient and play that long term game. Maybe I’m misreading that. So just walk us through. What did that look like for you, that mindset and how did you stay on track even though there may have been more push to try and generate revenue?

The reality of it is like when we first started, I was running a very lean operation. I mean super lean. Okay. It was me, a buddy, his wife and my girlfriend at the time. That’s, that was, that was our team, okay. And then the guys that we paid fifteen hundred dollars plus a month to, to keep pumping out these RFPs from India.

And so I’m pumping out all these numbers, I’m pumping out all these numbers and I’m like, “nothing’s happening.” And then I realize, you know, it comes back down. I’m like, “Well, I don’t know anybody,” right? I’m not spending time actually beating the ground and getting to know people. And there’s no rush. I mean, luckily I was in a place where financially I could support myself. All my bills were paid. So I did have time to build genuine connections and do this thing the right way.

I think what we get caught up in oftentimes is we jump to start and we just, we need to, we need to make money. We need to make this success. If we go a year in the negatives, like we’re unsuccessful, but in reality, you know, it takes some companies, they always say, like companies don’t see success for five plus years. And that’s a reality. Most companies don’t see success in those, those first five years is like “We’re barely keeping the door open.” Some of them make money within the first couple of years. But it can be expected.

And why is because unless you’re like a corner store, store on the corner that’s selling like some type of goods, if you’re doing services or things like that, it’s building out those relationships. And it’s not just relationships with partners, it’s relationships with the agencies, with the potential customers, with those people in their ecosystems, getting your name, name and brand recognition: those are things that build consistent business, right? And then those processes, developing those processes and procedures as well, right? So predictable processes which bring you predictable results, right? Repetitive, predictable processes bring repetitive and predictable results.

And it starts with a handshake. It’s the same thing in the military, right? It’s like, “I need something from S1, I need something from the supply shop.” Okay. For those, not for me, I need something from the supply shop. Supply is not just going to hand you nods. You know what I mean? If you’re just, if you’re anybody. But if I’ve spent time building a rapport with the supply sergeant, I might be able to get a nice pair of nods to go out and bring back.

[20:29] – Build a Repeatable Relationship-Building System

What are nods?

The binocular or the nods that you put on so that you could see in the dark if you’re doing night ops.

Gotcha. All right, so you talk about relationship building, but I’m wondering, do you have a system behind this or an engine? I mean, is this just free flowing? Like you just meet people, you make notes about their kids, birthdays and them, and is there a strategy behind it? And if there isn’t, that’s okay. But I’m, I’m wondering a lot, oftentimes, you know, people will talk about, for example, like referrals and they say, “Yeah, the majority of my business comes from referrals.” And you say, “What are you doing to get referrals?” “Well, we’re just like doing good work.” Okay. But there’s- they’re actually just reactive referrals. They come to them for doing good work, but they don’t have a system behind how to proactively get more referrals. And I’m wondering how have you developed, do you have a system to run the relationship side or is it just more ‘free flowing’ is working for you.

That’s a probably one of the best questions I think I’ve gotten in a very long time. So you’re, you’re definitely making my brain do circles right now, and I appreciate it. It’s all about proximity. Okay? I am a tech company. There’s no reason for me to be in a meeting with a construction or any, anything with construction or security or I don’t need to go to those conferences. I also don’t go to conferences where I don’t know anyone or I can’t do a soft introduction or there’s not someone there that I want to specifically meet.

That’s why before any conference I always ask for the attendee list, which you can do. You can email the registration head of registration, go, “Hey, can I have the list of attendees?” Okay. And I can go down that list of attendees and go, “Who’s going to be here that I want to talk to?” Right? Is a rep from Booz Allen going to be there? Is someone from CACI going to be there? Who is here that I want to talk to? Right? Or someone goes, “Hey, Kamar, you need to come to this because there’s someone here I want you to meet face to face.” Absolutely. I’m gonna go 10 times out of 10, if I have time, I’ll be there.

And then you just let that build organically. That’s called a warm introduction, right? Now, once we obtain these, what do I do with them? Right? Do they go into a repository? Absolutely, they go into a repository. I don’t just remember birthdays, right? They gotta go into something so I could track all these things. So they go into the repository. And then my COO schedules, what we call, we call them morning, we call them monthly check-ins. Okay? So every single one of our partners is on the calendar a specific day, a specific time, every single month. Okay. And if there’s anything in between, which there often is, we can make time for a meeting in between.

But this keeps us aware of what they’re doing, what their priorities are, what their targets are, what their clients are, right? And it keeps us aware of what, keeps them aware of what our targets are and what we’re looking for. So when we’re out and about scouring and ears to the ground and I hear something, I go, “You know what that reminds me of? My partner, X, Y and Z. Let me plug them into this.” And because I plug them into this, by proxy, when they’re out and about, they say, “You know, what that reminds me of Kamar. Let me plug Kamar into this.” And before long, you just have this ecosystem which is feeding itself, and then you start introducing your partners to each other, let them do business together.

So you’re talking right now. I want to make sure that I understand the distinction. There’s actual clients and there’s partners, right? So are you typically working directly with the end client or are you working through a partner and that’s where the business is coming from? Just break that down.

Both. In the government contracting world, we have our primes and we have our subs. Okay. If you’re a sub, you’re subbing to the company who is directly working for the client.

Which is the prime.

Right, which is the prime. So the prime is working directly, right? They own that relationship. Okay. You are a sub. So you’re working through the prime. The prime’s paying you.

So you’re sometimes a sub, sometimes the prime.

Exactly. If you’ve built up enough that you can prime, right? I have past performance, I have results, I have positive CPARS, et cetera. I’m priming and I’m bringing a sub with me. That means I’m directly working for the customer.

Now, on the commercial side, right. Which I always talk to when. Whenever I’m giving advice, I say, “Hey, you want multiple streams of income,” right? I want to work with federal, I want to work with state and local, which we do. And I want to work with commercial clients as well. On the commercial side, that’s just us, just me chatting with the customers, etc. Now I can send, like, okay, if there’s a product, which there’s been, and I say, “We can’t necessarily hold this up. Let me bring in one of our partners to hold up this end of the project.” And they oftentimes do. But you have to build that trust with your client. On a commercial side, it’s a completely different, completely different beast.

Do you take the same approach that you just mentioned in terms of the relationship building? Like, is there any difference in how you would approach whether you are going to be building that relationship with, let’s say, the state contact or the federal contact or a partner that might bring you in, them being the prime, you being the sub, is there any distinction how you approach the relationship and your activities to cultivate that relationship?

So, I mean, with respect to the FAR, right? So in the federal government, we have to be, we have to be cognizant of what we can and cannot do as far as, like, federal: the FAR right, federal regulations and things of that nature. So, like, I can’t send any gifts to a contracting officer over, I think $20 now or something like that. So I can send a box of donuts to the program office. or a

Or a lot of Starbucks cards or something like that?

Honestly, dudes were killing the game back in the 90s with that stuff, right? They messed it up for us, you know. But that’s how you build relationships. Like, “Hey, congratulations on getting married. Here’s,” et cetera, right? This dude gave me a wedding gift. Or, I mean, it happens, right? You call it bribery, you call it whatever. But, you know, that’s how they used to do it. But now we have to be respectful.

So with that, yes, there is a difference how I approach that relationship only because of the laws governing how I can approach this relationship. Now, once we’re in the door, right, it’s a positive working relationship, it’s on me just to be a great company and a great added value to that federal organization. The state level, right, for instance, like North Carolina, like, I can just- my buddy Tim over in Durham. I’ll just walk right into his office. “What’s up, bro? Good to see you, man. I submitted such and such the other day.” He’s, “Oh, yeah,” or “You want to go golf?” Like, we can have a more, you know, I golf a lot, so I can, I can have a more, more direct relationship, more friendship kind of relationship with them at the state level. On the commercial level, it’s the same thing, right? I can be- I can have a more open relationship with them. The federal level is very, you have to be very careful how you approach those relationships.

[27:39] – Smart Marketing Strategies That Actually Generate Business

So you talk a lot about building the relationships from a marketing kind of business development perspective. Is there anything else that, you know, you and the company have done that you have found works really well to open doors and to actually create more appointments, conversations, opportunities?

I’m really, like I said, I’m really big in touch points. So it’s like, I want to make sure that whether it’s a client, whether it’s a partner, we are communicating with them and they’re thinking about us every month of the year, every quarter.

So you have set calls with partners, like it’s in the calendar.

Yeah, I know every one of my partners, like when they founded their companies, so I’m going to send them happy anniversaries on their companies, right? They’re going to talk to me at some point, because I’m going to send them, “Hey, your daughter’s turning 18. Congratulations.” One of my buddies’ daughters just, one of my- see, now I call them buddies, right? One of my partner’s daughters just got into UNC Chapel Hill. One of my partners asked me to get her son into a college, which I did because I have great relationships over there.

So is the strategy- I get the relationship side and it seems like you’re very invested and focused on that. Is there anything, Kamar, that you do outside that? For example, content creation, right? Speaking. Advertising, Sponsorship.

Yeah, so we definitely do sponsorships. If you go to our company LinkedIn, right. LinkedIn is like the thing if you’re, if you’re in business, it’s the hub, it’s the Facebook of business. Okay ?If you go to our LinkedIn page, you’ll see that every week on Mondays and Wednesdays, we post some type of content. It’s a thought, just thought process. Okay? So people are seeing that. And the page is followed by, you know, contracting offices, et cetera, commercial customers and things like that. So they’re kind of seeing that, right? We’re talking business, we’re talking about entrepreneurship, we’re talking about technology, right? We’re talking about different things. Anna does an amazing job of creating that content. That’s her thing, alright? That’s what she wanted to do. Go for it.

So there’s that. Sponsorships are very, very specific as well. It’s very targeted sponsorships. Okay. I am targeting sponsors where I specifically know an agency or a customer is going to be there that I’m interested in doing work with. I will sponsor to put my company logo somewhere where they are going to be, especially if I know they have a need for services that we can provide. I know when I first started, I was a sponsor and stuff because I wanted to be known. And then everything became very strategic for me. I really started honing in on: “What the heck am I doing? Why am I sponsoring this event? Like, why did I just give you $4,000 for a golf tee sponsorship?” Right? “Oh, that’s why. Because such and such is going to be teeing off in that box and he’s going to see and be like, oh, this is good.”

Is there anything that you’ve tried from a marketing or business development perspective that has not worked?

Yeah, sending email blast. That’ll get you blocked real quick. How to get you in everybody’s spam folder. I will never do that again.

[30:52] – How to Hire the Right People for Company Culture

What about hiring? So I know you’ve built up, you have, was it now, was it eight full-time people or so? What have you learned about hiring? When you think about hiring, what are you paying attention to? What do you think about or what have you identified that maybe other people tend to miss or don’t talk about enough? Are there some principles that you kind of follow or how do you think about hiring and growth?

Yeah, so there’s two things. So there’s one thing that I’m looking for. Unless it’s a position that requires you to have a very specific skill set, or not a skill set, but very specific on paper, degree or certification, then I’ll care about it necessarily, right? I’m looking for this very specific type of character. I’m looking for, you know, if it’s on the sell side or if it’s on, you know, whatever side, it’s like I’m looking for somebody who really is going to buy into this mission and really wants to come in here and work for a long time, not just a short time, right? Not a good time but for a long time.

So that’s what I’m looking for, right? And then, and there’s certain things like I say ‘I don’t fire people, people fire themselves.’ Luckily I don’t have a high turnover rate at all. People tend to come in, but I mean when they first come in, we’re letting you know, like, “Hey, this is the company culture.” Not just you know, “Hey, I like this person.” But do you fit the culture of like the other staff? Because that working relationship is super important. You’re going to work harder next to someone that you actually like than you are working next to someone you can’t stand because you’re going to hate your job. You got to come in there and sit next to someone for eight hours? Again, like, “Man, I can’t stand the way this guy smells. You know, my desk is right next to-.”

So we want to create a comfortable, a safe environment and then an environment where everyone’s going to empower each other. So we have to be cognizant in the early stages. Very much so. If you have a company of over 300 plus people, I mean, hey, that’s kind of hard. But in the early stages I can hand pick right, very clearly who I want in what role. And I think that’s super important. And my strategy for hiring was always the hire top down: the first thing I needed was an executive assistant because holy crap, once you get the running, you’re running, and there’s no time to slow down and train someone up to pick up, right? And then it starts at the chief operations officer and then your CTO, human resources as you continue to grow, et cetera.

What does your executive assistant do most for you? What do you think is the greatest leverage that in her case, she provides for. For you and for the business?

She’s my last brain cell. No, she keeps me organized. That’s the biggest thing, right, is we have so many meetings, I’m pulled in so many different directions because, you know, Protech isn’t my only company. I have an advisory company that we kicked off the ground. I have medical clinics, I have a ballroom dance studio. I have real estate properties. And so it’s like I’m so many different places. She helps to keep me where I need to be and keep me organized. And that’s, that’s more important than anything.

[34:01] – Why Consistent Prospecting Fuels Long-Term Growth

What has been the biggest challenge for you so far? I mean, you’re again, what, three and a half years in, you’ve, you’ve grown, you know, to a nice level. You have eight people right now. Like, what’s been the biggest challenge that you’ve encountered that just stands out for you?

I think any company, the biggest challenge is always going to be new customer acquisition, right? It’ll always be new customer, new client acquisition. But once, what I always say is continue prospecting, because once you stop prospecting, you start dying. So that’s the most important piece. We all are always prospecting, whether it’s for new customers, whether it’s for new partners, whether it’s for new avenues of approach. We’re always, always, always prospecting, and we always will be.

But that’s the biggest one. And how do I address that? I think the reality of it is people think that you should just be winning every season, and that’s just not the reality of business. I mean, business is like this, right? You’re up for, you know, you might be up for 2, 3 quarters, and then you have a quarter where you’re down, right? The fourth quarter of last year was garbage for us, right? We had one opportunity that looked really good, and we did not get it picked up. And so we continued putting our foot on the ground, not putting all our eggs in one basket and prospecting, and we were able to start to rebound in Q1 and Q2 of this fiscal year.

So what do you think was behind that?

You got to look at government budgets at the time when I’m, what I’m talking about is during the change of administration, shenanigans in Congress and you know, DC controls it all. So it’s, it’s a lot that went into it and people started panicking. You know, people are starting to panic. Some people panicked, sold their companies and were like, “Hey, this is my time to retire.” And I’m like, “I don’t know that I’m going to let a guy who’s serving four years retire me,” you know, whatever there.

But you know, people, and then some people are just, were scared to do business. So they’re holding all their cards close to their, to their chest, right? I remember one of the biggest parts during the change of administration is that, you know, while they were trying to figure out the budget and all this other stuff, one of the, and, and DOGE of course too, people stopped going to events as much. They stopped spending money on travel, they cut all their company travel. So the people you’re used to seeing or the people that are going out and actually making connections in these agencies and then you get all these heads, all program offices, they were getting terminated, etc. from up top because wasteful spending and things of this nature, right?

So there was, there was a lot that played into that very deep fail Q4. And I think for us, knowing what I know now and if I could go back and do it again, I would have attached myself to someone who was winning, right? Someone who, who’s winning in that quarter, in that era of what we were going through there as small businesses, I would have attached myself to someone and said, “Teach me how you’re winning” and and just learned because I think as business owners, you can never stop learning.

[37:07] – The Future of AI Consulting and Machine Learning

I want to ask you about AI because I mean your work involves programming databases, right? Digital transformation, which is a big word that can mean a lot of things to different people. A lot of organizations are saying things like, you know, “We can just do more ourselves internally, right? AI has empowered us. We can get more, fewer people.” And I would guess that you’ve encountered some of those types of conversations where people are saying like, “No, maybe we don’t need this. We have AI.” I’d like to know what’s the reality for you? Like what are you actually seeing when it comes to AI? And if you have had those kinds of potential forms of resistance, what’s the positioning that you’ve been using effectively to overcome them? Like how are you talking about AI and your consulting business today?

Yeah. I think artificial intelligence is how we make our bread and butter, right? Building systems out that operate on, again, artificial intelligence with some type of machine learning curve in there or some type of machine learning in there. I think the reality of artificial intelligence and how I talk about it to our customers is there are certain things that we can automate. Okay. The reality of artificial intelligence, if I was to like super dumb it down, it’s the automation, right? It’s like: I am automating this process and this system is going to do it all for me. We have what we call AI agents, right? We call them agents, we program and train them to do a very specific and very important job. And they do that job and it’s on autopilot. That’s the reality of it.

But what I warn against is taking out the human aspect of it completely. As much as we can, we don’t want to take out the human aspect because I mean, computers make errors as well. So there has to be some type of catch there. So as we’re talking about artificial intelligence, we’re talking about containerization systems, we’re talking about security, cyber security, pulling from open source, like: how do we not, how do we train this model without pulling from an open source? I don’t necessarily want to pull from Google, right? Because if I can see you, you can see me. So I can pull into Google. That opens the door that Google can go, “Hey, what you got in there, buddy?” And now whatever company data or whatever data that you’re trying to keep, let’s call it sanitary, can potentially be corrupted or out there.

We’re looking at, you know, some security systems, we’re looking at systems for the Department of Defense where we can operate in low data or contested data, dirty data environments and then counteract AI, ‘red teaming’ agents and things like that out of DARPA is a huge thing. So those are the conversations that we’re having, right? We’re having- continue to keep the human aspect as we build out artificial intelligence enabled systems, continue to keep that a human aspect. And then we’re talking about obviously security protocols and things like that.

And what are you seeing today? I mean, like when, so I know you mentioned for you, 2022, 2023, there was already a lot, you know, conversations starting to happen around AI and ML, machine learning, then very clearly, right. The last couple years or so has been a real takeoff call, you know, three years or so maybe of even just the general public understanding, or having, I should say, some understanding or at least knowledge or awareness of AI, right? That’s, everyone’s talking about massive investments going into data centers and all kinds of stuff like that. From, from your vantage point, Kamar, are you still seeing growth? Have things plateaued? Where is it right now in terms of the stage of, of interest and, and investment from the different sectors that you’re working in?

I’d love to say, like, “Hey, it’s going to plateau,” but the reality, I don’t think it will anytime soon. With the evolution of quantum computing and then you throw artificial intelligence, and we haven’t even seen what artificial intelligence and quantum computing clash could look like. You know, there’s, it’s, we haven’t seen that reality yet. So that’s something that we have to take into consideration.

Agencies are still finding and people are still finding unique ways to program. Like I said, AI agents are a thing that really came to be within the last year from change. And you talk about red teaming, that’s definitely within the last year. Like there’s never been. Red teaming is a human thing.

What does red teaming mean?

The way that we’re looking at red teaming is identifying breaches, right? So identifying the breach systemically and then pinpointing it and feeding back dirty data. That’s the, that’s the defensive mechanism of it.

Okay, so it’s security related.

It’s security related. So identifying that breach, right. Where is it coming from when it happens? Flag it, mark it, et cetera. Even in the intelligence communities, we’re looking at how are we using artificial intelligence as well for threat identification and things of that nature.

You’re not seeing any decrease in demand or nothing like that.

If anything, I, I think we are, we’re probably twenty, thirty years off. Maybe twenty, just twenty years. But it’s going to continue to grow because there’ll be new things that come out early.

Early innings. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we are in one of the greatest eras of technology right now. Very, very realistically. I think one of the, one of the greatest eras of technology because so much is happening so rapidly. Everything is rapid. Just yesterday, you know, we have one thing, and then today it’s, or a week later, it’s like, “Oh, this product is blowing that out the water because it was able to do this.” And now you have models that can tell you how to make a product better, right? Like we have these, these thought models that, these logical models. Right? That’s a newer concept within the last six months. Logical models that can now produce logical thought patterns.

Yeah, no, I mean, I feel very similar. I mean, there’s certain aspects of what’s happening with AI that I think are just unbelievably exciting and positive. I’m an optimistic person by nature. And so I look at that and go, man, like, just. It’s unbelievable the time that we’re living in, because the kind of, you know, this revolution of capability and like, it’s just hard to imagine or it’s almost like what you can imagine is becoming real. I’ve always thought for many years that you watch movies and if you can see something in a movie and it might look just far out, like there’s no way, it’s going to happen at some point in the future, right? Like the Jetsons back in the day and flying cars or, you know, back to the future, the hoverboard, like, all these things are- that part what I don’t know, and when I think about my kids and what things will be like for them, right? Like the education and there’s certainly going to be a lot more opportunity. There’ll be opportunities. There’s always opportunity. They’ll just be different than where the opportunities have been and where they are today. But it’s certainly an exciting time.

[44:18] – What Kamar Would Do Differently Starting Over Again

So I want to ask you one more question before we wrap up. I want to be conscious of time here, Kamar. But for you, you know, applying the benefit of hindsight, if you were to look back over the last three and a half years or so of building your business to the point that it’s at today, what would you do differently, if anything at all?

I’d go work for Booz Allen as like a business development representative, if I’m being honest.

Why is that? Explain that.

So, yeah, so I’d go to Booz Allen, CACI or Leidos, so one of the larger companies, and become a business development rep or an account manager. And the reason I would do that is because often- like if, let’s say you want to start a business, right, and this is really important for those, those guys, those kids that are in their 20s or early 30s, like myself, right, we have time, right? The concept that we don’t have time, I think that we need to rush to make a million dollars and buy the Ferrari and et cetera, whatever else Instagram nonsense wants to throw at us, so this lifestyle is not- that’s not a reality. We have as much time as we give ourselves.

There’s a couple of benefits of that, right? If I was an account manager for one of those companies, A: I’m getting a travel budget. Okay, again, I just told you the most important thing that I think in business is the relationships that we build. Someone else is going to pay for me to build relationships. I am going to go out and do my very best that I can for Booz Allen, Leidos or whoever else that I’m working for at the time. I’m going to do the- I’m going to be a rock star, probably the best. I’m going to draw on the best sales that I can. I’m going to take all of that commission or that bonus money that I get from being a rock star over the next two to three years and I’m going to put it in my back pocket. I’m going to put it in some type of high-yield savings account where it’s just going to continue to grow. And then when it’s time for me to, you know, I’m going to invest in my 401k, etc. All these beautiful benefits that they give me. All right?

And when it’s time for me to leave, I’m going to slow, I’m going to slow walk myself out, right? I’m going to slow walk out. I’m going to build a brand. I’m going to make sure my company’s launch and I’m going to start circling back right to those conversations that I’ve had, those relationships that I’ve been able to build while I was under this umbrella and say, “Hey, I’m, I’m getting ready to get out and do my own thing and this is what I’m doing,” right? And now we’re having those relationships that I was able to build. So if I could do it all over again, I would do that. And I just take my time. You know, we have a saying in the special operations community: “Slow is fast and fast is steady.

I think what you mentioned early on about this, even before we hit record, that you’re, you know, the amount of, or the frequency that you have to change your tires because of how much you drive, right? And meeting people, I think is a real advantage in today’s world because more and more people are just spending time right in front of screens and those that are willing to put in the time and, you know, the money, the resources to actually go and meet people is- it really sets you apart from from any others. So well done for doing that.

Kamar, thanks for coming on. For people that want to learn more about you and your company, where’s the best place for them to go?

Please check our website out, www.protechconsultinggroup.com. You can tap in with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamardperkins/. We also have our company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/protechconsultinggroup/. You can shoot us an email at any time at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to get back with you.

Alright, well, thanks, Kamar, again for coming on.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Important Links:

Kamar Perkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamardperkins/

Protech Consulting Group Website: https://protechconsultinggroup.com/

Protech Consulting Group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/protechconsultinggroup/

Email Protech Consulting Group: [email protected]

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